


Talking to Michelangelo

by kittydesade



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-18
Updated: 2012-05-18
Packaged: 2017-11-05 14:24:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Natasha gets sex pollen'd and refuses to let anyone near her; the men are all gentlemen, including Tony; and you never thought Barton could sing, did you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Talking to Michelangelo

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by an inadvertent prompt I saw on my Dreamwidth network, but containing nothing explicit, because Natasha is private like that. And if you haven't heard Jeremy Renner singing New York State of Mind, go google. Go. You can thank me later.

"This is not good."

She had, by her reckoning, about five to fifteen minutes before the aerosol took effect. The prisoner smirked and started to spout his list of demands, which worked about as well as you'd expect when she slammed his head into the table and bolted for the door. He tried to get up and come after her, but the shackles got in the way.

Natasha slammed her hand on the lock until she heard the door hiss shut behind her, to the startlement of the guards outside. "Bio-contamination," she breathed, all too aware of the rise and fall of her breasts against the material of her suit, and the way the fabric slid against her skin. She didn't even have five minutes. "Hazardous. No one is to go in there without suits until it's scrubbed..."

One of the guards reached for her. If he touched her she wouldn't be able to help herself. She had to get somewhere safe, somewhere where she didn't have to see or hear or speak to anyone until this drug worked its way out of her system. Which pretty much amounted to her quarters. If she went to the medical bay they'd want to examine her, take off all her clothes and make her lay down on cold tables and 

"Son of a _bitch!_ "

"Agent Romanov?" Rogers called after her. She didn't stop to do more than register his presence as an obstacle to the safety of her quarters, just dodged around him and ran inside and slammed the door and locked it. 

And once she was inside she could lean against the door and pretend he wasn't knocking or saying anything, and pretend she wasn't thinking about the hips she'd almost collided into as she was running, or how good they'd feel between her thighs. Pretend she wasn't wondering if he was proportional to the rest of him.

"Dammit, dammit, _dammit._ " 

"Agent Romanov, are you all right?" Rogers's voice coming through the door was not helping her resolve not to open it. "There's a level four quarantine around the prisoner..."

She was already stripping out of her suit. Too hot, too tight, rubbing in places she didn't want to be rubbed. "I know, I know."

"Agent Romanov, if you're infected with some sort of contagion, we need to get you to the medical..."

"No!" Bright lights, stark white coats, smooth metal tools. "No. No, I need to stay here. Trust me." 

This didn't make it any better. Well, it made it a little better, but not by much. She sank to the floor, back pressed against the door and took a breath and tried not to think too much about what she was doing. Except that it was better than the alternative. Normally she would have the self control to make it as far as the bed, or at least a comfortable chair.

"Agent, if something's infected you, we really should..."

"No!" Stop talking, Rogers, please. Stop talking. Her fingers moved faster; if she could beat this, get some of the tension out, crawl into bed, maybe it would go away quickly. Maybe. "No. No doctors, no help, nothing. I need..." Her breath came quicker, harsher. She hoped he didn't know what he was listening to. "I just need to be left alone."

"... What happened in there?" His voice was close, and the door handle jumped and jiggled. She stopped, braced her heels against the floor and shoved her back up against the door by pretending she was pushing back against something else. 

"It's a..." Breathe, Natasha, breathe. "It's a, a scopolamine-pheromone cocktail of some kind. A de-inhibitor..." Gulping down air like it was being sucked out of the room. "A de-inhibitor and an aphrodisiac."

The handle stopped moving. Her fingers did not. She locked her jaw against the sounds but they came out anyway, sort of a grunt with some panting breaths through her nose to underscore how much she wasn't in control here. It sounded so loud in her tiny, cramped quarters. 

"Oh."

Yes, oh, Steve. She took a second, then tried to get up to her feet, to move towards the bed. The cool air over her skin, heated skin, heated and damp skin, it didn't help. It reminded her, in fact, of just how empty this room was, and how empty she was, and wouldn't it be nice if something came along and filled her up, plunging deep? Natasha reached out and grabbed the edge of the table with one hand, digging her nails in and muttering curses in every language she knew. Insidious damn drug. 

Outside the door something scraped, rubber against metal. "What are you doing?" she called. If he was going to try and pry open her door, he could _knock it down and try and pin her to the floor, and she would roll him and straddle his hips and_ no. Stop that. 

"Once they've started the decontamination protocols they'll come here and try to haul you off to the medical bay," Rogers pointed out, setting off another string of curses and heavy breathing. "They'll need to know they can't do that. Not until it wears off, at least." After a second. "It will wear off, right?"

"I hope so," she breathed, dropping to her knees. "I really hope so."

"Someone will have to explain it to them." As though it were that easy. "So I'll just wait out here and explain."

"Oh, _dammit_ , Rogers..." she muttered. Rising up onto her hands and knees to try and at least crawl to the bed. 

That made absolutely nothing better, and everything a whole lot worse.

  


  


  


Steve Rogers, of all people, made things better. Having someone to talk to on the other side of the door, someone she could trust not to open it and to block it shut if she tried from her end. Before she could stop to think about the implications of what she was doing she'd grabbed the blanket from her bed (she finally made it there) and made a nest for herself in the corridor of her quarters, so she could talk to him and hopefully stay far enough away that he wouldn't hear her. She'd just go silent for a little while.

"Maybe we should, um..." She could all but hear him blushing. By now thinking of whether or not the blush went all the way down only made her roll her eyes at herself, which could be a sign of improvement. Or a sign that she was getting used to this. "Maybe we should call someone?"

"I told you, no medics..."

"I didn't mean a medic," he said, and cleared his throat. "I mean, maybe... is there someone you'd want to call?"

Natasha could rattle off a string of phone numbers to various well-reputed escort agencies she'd either worked for or patronized in the past. She didn't want to call any of them, not like this, and she definitely didn't want to put poor Steve in the position of having to call any of them. "No, thanks. I'll be all right. When this wears off." If it wore off. Could this affect her forever? She'd give it twenty four hours and see. 

"Are you sure?" 

It took her a second to clear the haze from her mind to figure out that he had someone in mind. "What are you thinking, Rogers?" Even tingling and distracted she figured she could at least try to put the fear of her into him should he try and get her sleeping with someone. Or anyone. 

He cleared his throat; she didn't know what that meant without seeing his face. "Barton could..."

"No." Though that brought on a fresh wave of fantasy, as many times as she'd clung to Barton or he'd held onto her, as many times as they'd patched each other up or had their hands somewhere close and personal on each other's bodies, never for that reason. Her pheromone-addled mind supplied all kinds of reasons why she might slide her hands along those muscled arms, rock her legs along those tightly toned thighs. She knew exactly how he was proportioned, too, group showers and close quarters where they'd kept it professional and hadn't done a damn thing.

Now she could think of all kinds of things they could have done. More than the fleeting pictures with Rogers earlier, and the guards, this was full-on wave after wave of Barton in her arms, holding her just tight enough to make her feel wanted, not trapped. Barton's mouth on hers, breathing together, kissing. Barton writhing under her and she clenched her jaw till her teeth ground together, shaking her head. 

After a couple seconds of that she realized Rogers had no way of knowing what her response was. "No," she rasped out, then swallowed, fingers digging into her knee till it hurt. Not in the fun way, for once. "No, not Clint."

"Are you sure?"

"Not Clint," she said, more clearly and firmly. "No. You can't let him in."

She counted to twelve between when she answered and when Rogers next said something. "Agent Romanov, I know you and he are..."

Oh. That's where this was going. She could at least understand that, but still she shook her head, lying back on the blankets and passing the time between urges by running her hands over her body, which at least had the advantage of being medically useful as well. "Not like that," she told him, sighing. "He's, um. He's like my brother, you know? Close as I have to one. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't feel right." 

In the category of things she never expected to say to the good Captain, except these weren't ordinary circumstances. He already knew a lot of personal things about her, what was one more? Or so she tried to justify it. Shame crawling along her skin was for later, if ever, right now there were things Rogers needed to know. And one of those was why Clint could never, ever know what was going on in this room.

One more, and when that subsided and she'd withdrawn and wiped down the device she heard voices outside her door. The Captain, and someone else. Shit.

"Rogers..." she called, a warning and underneath that a plea for him to make it clear to her, if he couldn't tell her outright, who that was and what they wanted at her door. 

He cleared his throat. "It's, uh. It's Dr. Banner. He'd like to know if he can, um. Pass you a blood kit so you can send him some blood samples to test? If you're, uh." 

If she was up to it. Relief dragged her head back and blew cool air on her skin. Which just led to a concentration of sensation on her chest, but at least his timing was all right. "Five minutes," she told him. " _You_ open the door and slide it in." God, Natasha, don't say slide it in. "I'll pass it out to you when I'm done."

And hopefully it would only take five minutes.

  


  


  


It took three minutes, a minute or so per vial, she'd found a good vein. And it wouldn't have taken that long if she'd been more able to focus through the throbbing and the swelling and her body trying desperately to generate more lubrication. After this she'd have to lurch to her bathroom for water.

But she got the vials filled, sealed, she presumed Rogers had briefed Banner on what was going on as far as she knew it. Hopefully Banner would take all suitable precautions. He should know, anyway, about people with contaminated blood and strange symptoms. 

He cracked the door open far enough for her to slide the case with the vials out into the hall. The rush of clear, fresh air hit her face with two realizations, the first being that the air in her quarters must reek. The second was that he had a scent all his own she had never noticed before, never thought about before but now that she could smell him she wanted to smell him more and deeper, wanted to know what the crease of his body at the top of his thigh felt like when she plunged her face against his hip right before her mouth descended on him.

"Agent Romanov... _Natasha._ " 

Hands. His hands, on her arms. On her hands, she wanted more of his hands on her body and then the cold metal and she flew back against the wall, her body twitching in ways both familiar and unpleasant. The door slammed shut behind him.

"Wow. I don't think I've seen that since, um..." 

She clapped her hands over her ears. Tony Stark, of course. That was all she needed. His crass commentary outside her door while she was trying to focus on her symptoms, alleviating them and charting them. Her handwriting got more erratic as the urges built to irresistible strength.

"Hey, are you all right in there? I mean, Steve says you've been in there for four hours now..."

"Only four hours?" she muttered. "Christ."

"Do you need some, uh, lube or anything?" 

Natasha banged her head on the door. The irritation almost chased away the surge of excitement at the thought of more, um, no. "No, thank you." Beat. "And I never want to hear that word out of your mouth again."

"What, lube?" Bang. "No, it's a serious question, I mean. Um. The way this thing seems to be affecting you, there could be some, uh. Uncomfortable. Side effects?" 

Rogers had given up trying to talk to him halfway through that and was probably shaking his head on the other side of the thick metal door right now. She appreciated that he tried at least. Keeping Tony from speaking his mind was like trying to keep the world in one piece, it didn't work. You could only forestall the inevitable for so long.

"I'm fine, Tony," she called over her shoulder. "Thank you for your concern." Lube. She crawled over the floor to the sink, pulled herself up on it and stared in the mirror. Her eyes were red, her lips swollen. In order to drink she'd have to pull herself up on the sink and stand long enough to fill a cup of water, but it was easier just to lean against the sink and let her breasts soak up the coolness in the porcelain. 

Tony wouldn't shut up, though. She tossed back some water and made it back to the door on unsteady legs. "I'm sorry, what were you saying? I wasn't paying attention." Let him make what he would from that. 

"I said I've, uh. I've got this robot back at my place..."

"Stark, I don't want to know what kind of personal use playthings you've got at your place, but anything that's been touching you there is not something I want touching me anywhere." Something thudded gently against the door from the other side. She liked the idea that it was poor Steve, dismayed at the turn the conversation had taken. 

It even shut Tony up for nearly a minute. "Wow. That's not... really..."

"That's exactly what you meant." 

"Okay, yeah." 

And she hadn't wanted that confirmed because now that image filled her head, Tony Stark, naked, bent over something that in her mind looked remarkably like a workout bench and one of his pet robots doing things she didn't need to be thinking about. This was frustrating. On at least two levels. "If I wanted to use your sex machines I would have done it by now." Fingers were easier. Softer against her body, more sensitive, oh god he could hear it in her voice. Maybe Rogers couldn't but Tony Stark had bedded more women than she'd. No. Not even under the influence of this drug did she want to think about that number. 

Seventy two seconds. A personal best. "Are you telling me you've been in my stuff?"

"Tony, I was embedded in your office for two months. Of course I've been through your stuff." God, she should have taken him up on his offer to get lube. The time to completion was getting longer, and not in conjunction with the intervals between urges. Her fingers moved faster, nothing within reach was thick enough. She had to squirm to get at the right angle.

"That's." Three seconds. "I don't know how to take that. You've seen my stuff but you haven't touched any of it? How do you." Two seconds. "I mean, okay. From a woman's point of view, do you think, for Pepper, I should..."

"Stark, is it possible for you to shut up longer than a minute and half so I can pretend I'm getting a little privacy here?" 

No. No it was not. "Wow. That's the kind of voice you use when you've got someone's head pinned against something hard and metal..."

"Okay, I think, um." Steve's voice. Thank you, Steve. "Mr. Stark, why don't you go check on Dr. Banner's progress."

"Okay, sure. No problem. I'll, uh, see what I can dig up for you while I'm at it, okay?" he called down from whichever direction he was being marched off in. Natasha panted out a curse with each breath as she came for the twenty seventh or so time.

  


  


  


It wasn't Tony who came back. It was Pepper, who whispered that Steve was keeping Tony occupied and here, in case Natasha needed it, they were an Um. Natasha didn't ask, Pepper didn't tell, it was all very understood and knowledgeable and thank god Pepper thought to grab something that was still in its package. She tore the plastic off so fast she almost cut herself on the edges of it. Batteries, too. The whole thing came in one of those cheap red satin satchels, so she guessed it was a gift from Tony for some occasion. The ones where he and Pepper weren't in the same place at the same time.

Something smooth, buzzing, covered in gel. The relief was as good as the satiation, and for the first time since her hand started to cramp Natasha thought she might get through this with her sanity intact.

The scrape of a chair by the door signaled Rogers had resumed his post. "Agent Romanov," he cleared his throat, uncomfortable but also unwilling to leave her alone right now. Relieved of makeshift toys, she could even smile a little at that.

"Thank you, Captain." 

Four hours slipped into five, and she slipped down the door and back into her nest of blanket around six. The chair didn't scrape again; she wondered what Rogers could possibly be doing out there. 

"Nat."

Her heel scraped along the floor and the toy dropped from her fingers. Not the voice she'd expected. "Barton, what are you doing here." All business, as much as she could be all business with her head swimming and her body thrumming and sweating out as much water as she poured into it. Was Rogers outside? 

The chair scraped. But it was a chair, it could have had anyone on it. "Keeping an eye on you." He didn't sound as though anything was wrong. She hadn't wanted him to see her like this.

Not that he could see her, properly. She could just keep quiet and he wouldn't know what was going on, not in a specific sense. Her mind split on two tracks, one where he beat down the door and they grappled in all kinds of ways she'd barely even considered as a preference before, and one where she tried to mitigate the damage this would do to their friendship. Confusing the issue. Crossing lines.

"Where's Rogers?"

The smile in his voice translated to a picture in her head, the way his eyes crinkled at the corner when he grinned. Usually laughing at her, not in the malicious way. In the way that accompanied the word 'adorable' with anyone else. Nothing about this situation was adorable and _dammit,_ Barton, why couldn't you leave well enough alone? "He went to look for batteries."

"Uh-huh." Okay, maybe that was a little funny. "Who told him to do that?"

"Pepper."

Her body tried to make laughing a sexually stimulating activity; Pepper's gift did more to stimulate her through the shifting of her legs than her body did. Maybe it was finally wearing off. Or maybe she was just too exhausted to respond. "Yeah. I can imagine the look on his face."

Barton chuckled. Then, after she'd managed one more and slumped back on her blankets to stare at the ceiling, he started to talk again. "They isolated the prisoner in the interrogation room you two were in and monitored all their ... little monitors for everything they could think of to test for, chemical and biological weapons, sound frequencies, radiation on all the spectra. They had computers going up the walls, Tony brought in some of his equipment so they could collate all the data. He's still in there as far as I can tell, though not like you are..."

And right up to that point he had been helping. "Thanks for reminding me."

"Sorry." 

There were cracks on the ceiling. Little ones, around the light fixture. Metal fatigue, she decided. The rest felt good, gave her body a chance to recover. To remember that it wanted to be stimulated. Damnation. "No, keep talking," she said finally. Closing her eyes and pretending this wasn't Barton, that it wasn't her, this was happening to someone else. What was going on between her legs was happening to someone else. And she was talking to Clint Barton. Like she did.

He kept talking. Not about what she was doing, they both ignored that, but about Tony Stark being impossible and Rogers being adorable and Thor's reunion with his girlfriend, long awaited and full of romantic cliches. Someone, she suspected either Coulson or Stark, had been showing him all the wrong kind of movies. Or the right ones. They talked about training, about not fitting in with the rest of the team, about no one being a team player except maybe Thor, who it somehow turned out was used to unit combat. Barton was half used to it too and half not inclined to it. But working with Nat was all right, she guessed.

It didn't make the pheromone intoxication go away. It didn't abate the symptoms but it made them tolerable. Around the others, her lack of control grated like sandpaper on the inside of her skin. This was, though she tried not to think about it like that, more like a normal night. 

Not normal in the sense that they did this regularly. Or at all. But she could easily imagine her and Barton spending the night together, talking between bouts of a whole other kind of grappling. 

He stopped talking when her words grew too ragged, picked up the sentence again as though nothing had happened. "... took it harder than anyone guessed."

Natasha blinked, collected her thoughts again. "Well, did Stark guess?" 

"If he did, he didn't tell anyone. Hard to say what that guy picks up on, he acts like a jackass even when he's serious." 

She smiled. Part of why she got along so well with Barton was he didn't mince words, he didn't equivocate. She could appreciate blunt honesty when she spent so little time around it. "He knows her pretty well," she admitted. "Even if his way of trying to help ..."

"Wasn't all that helpful?" Barton was grinning. She heard it. "Yeah, I bet."

They lapsed back into silence, this time unbroken by buzzing or rustling blankets, heels kicking at the table-leg. She stretched out and stared at the ceiling, tracing her fingers over her body while the silence settled around them. Relaxing, too. She trusted Barton to guard the door, and she didn't have to explain anything.

Bartons fingers drummed faintly on the other side of the door, some rhythm she recognized but couldn't place. And then he started to sing, and the shock of it froze her where she lay and obscured the first half-line. "... a glass of wine in her hand..."

Two more lines and she'd placed it. And she didn't know if it was an achingly pointed message or just his taste in music. "You can't always get what you want..." she hummed along with him, half-shocked to stillness by the rich sound. In all those years, she hadn't ever known he could sing.

"I didn't know you could sing," she told him, rolling onto her stomach and looking at the door. Her body subsided into quiet twitches, which helped her think, but it still felt as though she could break out into a fit of grasping and clutching any second now. Exhaustion, she figured. No one's body could keep up with the demand of never-ending lust, and her mouth was sticky and dry again.

Barton stopped. "Off and on." But he didn't explain, and she realized she shouldn't have pressed. If she'd been on the other side of the door she could have seen his face and figured it out, herself. Working on half the data was hard, hurt her abilities to read her opponent. Next came Johnny Cash. Then Leonard Cohen. Then Hendrix of all things, then Leonard Cohen again, by which point Natasha was rolling her head around on the floor in mixed exasperation and discomfort. She didn't need this, not now. 

"Barton..." She couldn't force the words out past a whisper, though. "Clint, please." 

He might have heard her. She didn't think he did. But after the Leonard Cohen he slid into wordless humming, foot tapping in the distance beyond the door. And after that last bout she fell mercifully asleep, or maybe passed out was more accurate.

  


  


  


Natasha woke up in her bed, with two layers of blankets and a horrible sweaty feeling all over her body. Except where she felt like she had the worst infection known to womankind, god, she needed a shower.

Who had gotten her into bed? And what the hell had happened when they did? She threw off the blanket and took stock of her aches and scrapes and bruises and her lack of nourishment and water, and it still wasn't until she had made it halfway into the bathroom before she realized what was missing. Toys and blanket and everything lubricating in her room she could find all spread out on the floor, and she didn't feel the need to grab for any of them.

Actually, she wanted to bundle it all up and throw it away and never see it again, but that was beside the point.

So, whatever that spray was, it was a short term effect at best. Possibly Banner had come up with an antidote, or if it was highly contagious whoever came into contact with her could be sedated until it wore off. She didn't want to think about what happened if it was just her who was susceptible. The loss of eight hours or more was bad enough. Her internal clock said more, but she was as disinclined to trust her judgment on that as she was to trust her self-control as far as letting anyone in went.

Someone had already been in, she reminded herself. Someone had come in, tucked her into bed, and left her to sleep it off like, well, Tony Stark on a bender. She wasn't Tony Stark. She didn't need to be tucked into bed after a goddamn bender.

Glass of water, no, two glasses of cool water, and a hot shower. Then she could put the toys away, pull her armor back on, and go out and face the rest of her rag-tag team. And Barton.


End file.
